As you can see from the stats above, the strengths and weaknesses of these teams aren’t quite what conventional wisdom would have you believe. The Cavs have long been regarded as a defense-first team, while the post-Gasol Lakers have always been an offensive juggernaut. This season, however, the Cavs are actually a little better offensively than the Lakers, but the Lakers have the league’s best record thanks to the league’s best defense.

So instead of devoting a lot of time to how the Cavs might be able to stop the Lakers when the Lakers have the ball, I’ll just do a cliff notes version: Try and goad Fisher or Artest into taking jumpers, especially off the dribble, keep Bynum out of ridiculously deep position and hope he misses his first one or two short shots, hope the Lakers don’t feed Pau too much, sag off Lamar Odom, and pray that Kobe doesn’t do that thing Kobe does. That’s about it. Of the five best post players in the league, I think that three of them play for the Lakers, so interior defense will be a priority.

Now for the more interesting side of the ball, here’s a breakdown of how the Cavs’ offense matches up against the Lakers’ excellent D, with all data courtesy of Hoopdata.com:

Zone 1: At The Rim

Here’s the oddest thing about how the Lakers play defense. Even though the goal of almost every NBA offense is to get shots at the rim, the Lakers allow more shots at the rim per game than any other team in the league, and still manage to have the best defense in the league.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, the Lakers are extremely good at defending shots at the rim; only the Cavs and Celtics allow a lower field goal percentage on close shots than the Lakers’ mark of 56.7%.

Second, and even more important, the Lakers don’t foul. They only allow 25.6 free throw attempts per game, which is tied for the lowest mark in the league. Since the only shots more efficient than shots at the rim are free throws, the Lakers allowing more contested shots at the basket rather than giving up fouls is a good strategy on paper, and it’s certainly been working for them thus far.

On the Cavs’ side of things, the Cavs actually attempt a below-average amount of shots at the rim per game, but are excellent at converting those opportunities when they get them; only Atlanta and Boston converts a higher proportion of its shots at the rim. The Cavs are only slightly above-average when it comes to drawing fouls, so they shouldn’t expect all that many free throws against the league’s most disciplined team in terms of fouling.

The bottom line in this zone is whether the Cavs will attempt to work the ball and utilize their finishing ability against the Lakers’ allowance for opposing teams to get shots at the rim, or get discouraged after missing a few contested layups without getting a whistle and settle for jumpers.

Zone #2: <10 feet

The Lakers are the best team in the league at defending this zone, only allowing an opposing field goal percentage of 34.6% on non-layup shots inside of 10 feet. Cleveland is above-average from this zone, but should probably stay out of it against the Lakers, whose length makes little baby jumpers and floaters extremely difficult to convert.

Zone #3: 10-15 feet

The Lakers are actually slightly below-average at defending this area, but the Cavs are the worst team in the league from 10-15 feet, making only 34.1% of their shots from that area, in no small part because this range is LeBron’s Achilles heel at this point of his career. So basically, midrange jumpers are going to be a bad idea come Christmas day.

Zone #4: 16-23 feet

And to go back, the Cavs are slightly above average from 16-23 feet, but the Lakers are the best team in the league at defending 16-23 foot shots, allowing a field goal percentage of 35.8% on those shots. So, just to put a bow on this section, the Cavaliers are the worst team in the league from the one midrange zone the Lakers are not the best team in the league at defending. Awesome.

Zone #4: Three-Point Baskets

Here’s where the unstoppable force meets the immovable object a little bit. The Cavs come into Christmas day as the best-shooting team in the league from beyond the arc, and the Lakers are the best team in the league at defending it, having given up some of their extreme trapping behavior for more reasonable rotate-and-react schemes, as Kevin Pelton recently noted.

And while threes are a fickle mistress and always tricky to predict, as randomness can often dictate who’s going to hit more threes in a given contest, I actually see one ray of hope that might tilt the three-ball probabilities in the Cavs’ favor a bit.

The most amazing thing about the Cavs’ three-point prowess this season isn’t that they make their threes at such a high percentage, but that they take a higher proportion of their threes off the dribble than any team in the league other than Washington, with more than a quarter of their three-point attempts coming off the bench. Most of that is because LeBron James and Mo Williams are excellent at shooting threes off the dribble, which good defensive rotations don’t have an answer for. If LeBron and Mo can drain a few threes of the bounce like they’re capable of, they might be able to kick-start the Cavalier offense, get the formidable Laker defense a bit out of whack, and open some things up.

So basically, the Cavs’ best hope for success against the Lakers could be to look for the drive, be aggressive going to the hole and make the extra pass instead of trying to draw contact, and go for the three-pointer instead of trying a midrange jumper over the Lakers’ long defenders.

There’s an extremely high likelihood that things will end up playing out differently on the court than it looks like they might on paper, but that’s as close as I can get to figuring out a way to crack this formidable defense.

Other random notes:

-Lots of Delonte and not that much AP, please. AP’s best skill is his ability to make catch-and-shoot threes, and as was discussed the Lakers rotate to cut off the three better than any team in the league. Also, Delonte will make Kobe work much harder at both ends of the court than AP will, which is all you can really game-plan to do against Kobe.

Kobe will be able to post Delonte and shoot over him, but Delonte will fight for every inch and play him physical, keep him from blowing by him on the perimeter and either getting to the line or getting his teammates involved, and you have to give something up against Kobe, even if that something is as formidable as Kobe’s post game.

-The Lakers’ weakness is definitely their bench. If Shaq or Andy can get somebody into foul trouble (Shaq by forcing defensive fouls, Andy by getting a few loose-ball fouls and charges), it could be huge.

-The Mo Williams/Derek Fisher matchup is one the Cavs are absolutely, positively going to have to leverage, because past that there aren’t a lot of promising matchups for them.

-Bottom line, the Cavs are going to need to roll on all cylinders and maybe a few new ones to beat the Lakers in their house, but if they can get pumped and do it i could give them a lot of momentum for the next few weeks and maybe even into the playoffs.

-I feel silly spending this much time on previews because what happens during the game will almost certainly be stuff I didn’t come anywhere near predicting, but hopefully this was fun and got you in the mood for some holiday ball. Merry Christmas, campers, and be sure to join me in the Daily Dime Marathon Christmas Day Chat tomorrow.

From this perspective, it should be an even game. You could make the argument that one of the above advantages is bigger, but this could go either way. If the Laker’s (other) guards contain Mo and Delonte, and Gasol and Bynum absolutely torch the Cavs’ front line, sure. Lakers win. Or vice versa. I see this game coming down, predictably, to Lebron vs. Kobe. As an optimistic Cavs fan, I see Lebron as a better player than Kobe right now. Close game, Cavs win by 4.

Mo put up a big game on the road, actually leading the team in scoring. Had 3 big threes and definitely outplayed Fisher. Delonte didn’t have a huge impact on the game but played some tough defense and played his part.

Although there was never a question as to who had the advantage at the 2, Parker defended Kobe as well as anyone can, with two blocks on him and a couple of steals.

Kobe may have had more points than Lebron, but did not do it nearly as efficiently. Kobe’s mini-tantrum at the refs (and what I believe was an intentional elbow in the kidneys to Mo) contrasted well with Lebron calling the team together to tell them to keep their composure as the fans threw stuff out on the court.

Brown took a gamble putting both Shaq and Z in after disastrous results with this lineup earlier in the year, but it actually worked. Instead of getting beat or exploited by smaller, better-shooting bigs, our two 7-footers neutralized their 7-footers, keeping them from taking over.

Of course, the story of the whole game was defense. Even if the Lakers are supposedly a defensively minded team, holding a squad with that much talent to 87 points is definitely an achievement.

Also a good showing by Moon, with a couple alley-oops and a ridiculous banked-in shot-clock-beating three that pretty much killed any attempt by the Lakers to come back in the final minutes.

I want to post this on the recap thread, but Ill post it here for now, then on the recap when its up:

This game does reveal some chinks in the Lakers armor. The Lakers biggest advantage, their post players, were neutralized by the Cavs bigs. Ron Artest, who was brought in to match up with the stronger small forwards (i.e. Melo and LeBron), had some major problems with LeBron. Letting LeBron past him is not surprising, Bron is too quick. However, LeBron also overpowered Artest on several occassions, and that IS a problem. Artest’s one advantage in the past was that he had the strength to keep LeBron from overpowering him. Not anymore.

Another problem is the Cavs bench DOMINATED LA’s bench. Everyone knew their bench wasn’t that great to begin with, outside Odom. Take away the 8 garbage points from Sasha and Powell, and the Lakers got a whopping 9 bench points. The Cavs proved to be much deeper, and they didn’t even need Gibson, who has been the team’s best three point shooter, and one of the best in the league.

I still think the Lakers are the best in the West, and likely the league, but we could be seeing the same thing we saw last year with CLE and ORL. The Cavs were better against everyone, but ORL had the matchup advantage

This game pretty much illustrated everything anyone ever needed to know about Kobe/LeBron Cavs/Lakers.

1.) LeBron can win games even when he has poor shooting nights. He set his teammates up, played excellent defense, got after loose balls, and kept his team composed in a highly emotional game. Kobe wins games with his shooting, he doesn’t make his teammates better directly but through osmosis, which is not the same as LeBron SETTING people up. Even though he is much older than LeBron he is definitely a more emotional player. He allowed himself to get frustrated and was never able to rally his team. He tried to shoot his way back into the game instead of stopping the Cavs.

2.) The Lakers have so much talent, but require chemistry and coaching to win. When they think they can just beat teams with talent, they get destroyed (see: WCSF ’09) Tonight they were fired up, healthy, and wanting to make a statement. Instead they embarrassed themselves and their fan base. How many cheap shots do you think they would have taken on Mo had the refs not started calling Ts?

3.) This is the new Cavalier team. They have immense talent, but seem to “beat themselves” as Shaq said after the game. When they execute and play D for 48 minutes, they have shown they can be very formidable with road wins at Orlando/Miami/Phoenix/Sacramento/Los Angeles. That is impressive.

The Lineup: (Click for Author’s Archive)

Nate Smith is an Associate Editor. He grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, and moved to NE Ohio in 2000. He adopted the Cavs in 2003 and graduated from Kent State in 2009 with a BA in English. He can be contacted at oldseaminer@gmail.com or @oldseaminer on Twitter.

Tom Pestak is an Associate Editor. He's from the west side of Cleveland and lives and (mostly) dies by the success and (mostly) failures of his beloved teams. You can watch his fanaticism during Cavs games @tompestak.

Robert Attenweiler is a Staff Writer. Originally from OH, he's long made his home in NYC where he writes plays and screenplays (www.disgracedproductions.com) some of which end up being about Ohio, basketball or both. He has also written for The Classical and the blog Raising the Cadavalier. You can contact him at rattenweiler@gmail.com or @cadavalier.

Benjamin Werth is a Staff Writer. He was born in Cleveland and raised in Mentor, OH. He now lives in Germany where he is an opera singer and actor. He can be reached at blfwerth@gmail.com.

Cory Hughey is a Staff Writer. He grew up in Youngstown, the Gary, Indiana of Ohio. He graduated from Youngstown State in 2008 with a worthless telecommunications degree. He can be contacted at theleperfromwatts@yahoo.com or @coryhughey on Twitter.

David Wood is our Links Editor. He is a 2012 Graduate of Syracuse University with an English degree who loves bikes, beer, basketball, writing, and Rimbaud. He can be reached on Twitter: @nothingwood.

Mallory Factor is the voice of Cavs: The Podcast. By day Mallory works in fundraising and by night he runs a music business company. To see his music endeavors check out www.fivetracks.com. Hit him up at Malloryfactorii@gmail.com or @Malfii.

John Krolik is the Editor Emeritus of Cavs: The Blog. At present, he is pursuing a law degree at Tulane University. You can contact him at johnkrolik@gmail.com or @johnkrolik.

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